


done with the compass

by what_on_io



Category: Plebs (TV)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, M/M, Season/Series 04, The Beard, awkward boys in love, i swore to myself i'd never write another Plebs fic but here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 01:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14415135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io
Summary: Marcus can't stop staring at Aurelius's beard.





	done with the compass

**Author's Note:**

> It is 2am and I've just spent hours finishing this. Who even am I anymore. I'm not sure this is what anyone had in mind when they wanted more Plebs slash but here it is anyway. The pretend relationship trope just burrowed its way right in here.
> 
> Title from Emily Dickinson.
> 
> Come see me on tumblr (what-on-io) and shoot me a message! I take prompts :D

Marcus can't stop thinking about Aurelius's beard.  
  
This is obviously a worry for various reasons, not least of which the little patch of facial hair is actually quite a disturbing addition to any man's chin. But it's on his mind night and day, keeping him up when he should be grabbing what precious sleep he can, because since the accident Marcus hasn't slept a full night through. But here he is, lying awake at three in the morning, chasing thoughts of Aurelius's fucking beard, of all things, round his head.  
  
He's fairly sure he never gave it much thought back at work, when all Aurelius had to do was stand there with a jug and attempt the occasional jeer at him and Stylax. When Marcus could go home at the end of the day and have Aurelius not be there. But now he's there all the time - even after Marcus firmly but good-naturedly evicted him from the flat, he still ends up crashing on the sofa most nights, against Marcus's warnings that Grumio likes to leave emergency rotisserie chicken between the cushions. They're always working late together at the bar, watching the empty doorway in case of a sudden influx of customers, and the flat is closest. So Aurelius is there when Marcus goes to bed, he's there with a plate of toast when Marcus gets out of bed, pouring tea for him before the others get up, he's there on the way to work and he’s there at work and then again on the way home. And wherever Aurelius is, so's his beard. It's maddening.  
  
Aurelius must have noticed by now. Even if the man is spectacularly good at being generally unaware of most things - and other people’s feelings towards him especially - Marcus finds himself staring at the beard eighty percent of his waking hours. Aurelius can’t have missed that, surely. Every time they have a conversation Marcus ends up forgetting what they’re supposed to be talking about and staring at the bloody chin patch instead.  
  
He should have bigger things to worry about. He does have bigger things to worry about. His wallet, for one, since they're hardly even scraping by at the wine bar. His love life, which is nonexistent since Delphine abandoned him for that cheesy git _Gregory_. The fact that his best friend was crushed by a rather large stone block right in front of Marcus's eyes. The fact that sometimes, when Aurelius is moaning about Jason or attempting to be funny, Marcus forgets to miss Stylax altogether.  
  
Marcus heaves himself out of bed with a grunt, tugs his tunic over his rumpled hair, and pads out into the living room. It's bloody pointless trying to sleep anyway - Grumio's snoring is too loud and Jason's still having sex in the next room over with some girl he coerced back to the flat with the promise of six-fork food for breakfast. Marcus feels a bit sorry that he probably won't even offer her the stale bread they've got in the cupboard before he boots her out the door. But he has his own problems to deal with.  
  
Namely, the pubic growth that's decided it likes its forever home on Aurelius's face.  
  
The man himself is folded neatly on the too-small sofa, knees curled to his chest and eyes squeezed shut. Surely he can't be asleep, not looking so tense. But then it is Aurelius. He's the bloody dictionary definition of tense.  
  
"You up?" he asks anyway, flopping into an unoccupied kitchen chair. The sound of Jason's humping permeates the walls. How has the man not tired himself out yet? He goes like a bloody bull.  
  
A purposeful snore erupts from Aurelius.  
  
"Take that as a yes, then," Marcus grumbles, and fixes himself some cold leftover tea. It's disgusting, of course, but what isn't in here?  
  
"Mmmh," Aurelius finally grumbles, easing himself into a sitting position. "What d'you want, Marcus? I was asleep."  
  
"No you weren't," Marcus says. “I know you weren’t, because you weren’t sleep talking about your mum this time.”  
  
“I don’t sleep talk! And certainly not about my mum!” Aurelius bursts out, tugging the ratty blanket higher up his body as if to shield himself. “You take that vile accusation back!”  
  
“Ooh mummy, I forgot my packed lunch! Mummy, Flavia won’t stop calling me water-boy! Tell her it’s water- _man_ , mummy!”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Marcus huffs, hiding a grin with his mug. “But seriously, Why don't you ever go home? I should start charging bloody rent."  
  
It comes out a bit snappier than intended, and Aurelius's face crumples a bit. "Sorry. D'you want me to go? I didn't mean to take up space, it's just your place is closest, and I'm always tired, so..."  
  
"You're always tired 'cause you're always pretending to sleep on that awful sofa. Even you can’t say it’s comfortable. Grumio’s hefted himself onto it too many times for that. I think the floor'd be better, to be honest." Marcus sucks in a sharp breath. “And you don't have to go. Or- I'm not bothered. Whatever.” He already has two men leeching off him, why not throw in another?  
  
“I mean I know why you threw me out in the first place,” Aurelius says. Marcus braces himself. “It was too painful a reminder.”  
  
That’s… not what he expected. “Er, a reminder of what, exactly?”  
  
“Of Stylax, of course! I know you’re having a hard time over what happened.”  
  
“Okay… but, um, why?” Marcus dares ask. At least Aurelius hasn’t mentioned Marcus’s staring yet.  
  
A-a-a-and now he’s staring at it again. It’s dark enough in the flat that the beard makes Aurelius’s face look more angular than it already is, frames him oddly in the dimness. Marcus wants to-  
  
Wants to what?  
  
“Because he was your best friend!” Aurelius is saying, like it’s the obvious answer. “And it felt like you were replacing him too soon with your other best friend.” Aurelius pauses, then adds, “Me, obviously,” for clarification. “I understand, Marcus.”  
  
“Oh. Well, yeah. Right!” Marcus agrees, too loudly. “Of course that’s why. It was just too- painful!”  
  
“Exactly. So I just want you to know that I don’t hold it against you or anything. Even if my parents weren’t as cheerful as I thought they’d be about me moving back in.”  
  
“Give you a hard time, did they? Thought they were finally free of you only to have you come shuffling back in with your tail between your legs, crowding up the swimming puddle with your wooden duck again?”  
  
Aurelius shoots him a look. “Well, my dad was still a bit upset that I called off the wedding to Drucilla that time. And he heard about the glory holes. He wasn’t too thrilled about that either, to be honest. And then that time they thought me and Stylax were snogging. I mean- I think they were happy that I was settling down, really. Even if it wasn’t with a woman they’d background checked.”  
  
“What?” Marcus is stunned. That’s the only word that makes sense out of the millions of questions currently wrestling for space in his head. “They thought you were- settling down? With who, exactly?”  
  
“Well, I just told them you were a friend from work. And that you’d just lost someone close to you, needed someone to lean on in difficult times, etcetera.”  
  
“You told them we were a couple?!”  
  
“Not in so many words!”  
  
“But that’s what they think! And now you’re never home! They’re gonna expect a wedding invitation next!”  
  
“No!” Aurelius insists. “Not for another few months, at least!”  
  
“Bloody hell, Aurelius! Just- what the absolute fuck. How did my life come to this? These are supposed to be the best years of my life, and here I bloody am. Sharing a flat with a slave who leaves snot under the table and a man I barely even know having a lot more sex than me, loudly, and another man whose parents are waiting for us to announce our engagement. And I’m the only bloody one who pays rent!”  
  
“You have got a wine bar, though.”  
  
“Yeah. I suppose I have, technically, got a wine bar.”

* * *

 

The next day at work, Marcus studiously refuses to look at the beard. He busies himself greeting customers at the door, which basically leaves him standing alone by the foot of the stairs all day glancing hopefully upwards whenever there’s movement from outside. Once or twice someone wanders in looking for the loo, but apart from that, the only customer is an old man who orders a glass of water and makes it last three hours.  
  
“He brightens the place up, look!” Jason insists, although he’s busy trying to look up women’s skirts from his vantage point at the bottom of the stairs. “Hey, this is a really good angle, no wonder you’ve been standing here all day!”  
  
Marcus manages a faint _hmph_ and leaves him to it, which unfortunately puts him back at the bar with Grumio and Aurelius.  
  
“Are you alright, Marcus? Only you’ve been a bit off all day,” Aurelius says, eyeing Grumio warily in case he starts shouting the odds about which animal they’re supposed to be stuffing in which today. Marcus’s veto of the whole stuff-stuffed-in-stuff menu occasionally gets overruled by a spurt of artistic genius from his slave, and today’s apparently one of those days.  
  
“I’m fine,” Marcus mumbles, looking down at the bar where someone’s scratched their initials into the wood. _AB_.  
  
Aurelius’s beard.  
  
Bloody buggering hell. He needs to stop this. He needs fresh air.  
  
“Look, if it’s about the rent, I don’t mind paying it, alright?” Aurelius continues. Marcus heaves himself out of his seat, needing air.  
  
“It’s not about the rent. I just- I just need to go for a walk. I’ll be back- soon. Probably.” With that, he lunges for the stairs only to be halted by a pair of footsteps and then two bodies descending into the bar area, almost knocking him bodily off his feet. He stumbles a bit, regains his footing, and glances up to see what calibre of customer they’ve attracted now.  
  
Oh.  
  
Oh _shit_.  
  
“Mummy? Dad?”  
  
It’s only Aurelius’s bloody parents.

* * *

 

“When we heard you’d been involved in a new business venture we couldn’t wait to visit, darling. See you doing so well for yourself!” Aurelius’s mum is actually kind of sweet, Marcus supposes, watching her coo over her son while he takes their order. His dad, not so much. The man keeps sneaking looks at Marcus whenever his wife isn’t watching, and once he swears he sees him draw a finger threateningly across his throat.  
  
“Thanks, mummy. You really didn’t need to come all the way here though.”  
  
“Nonsense, sweetheart! We want to try this new cuisine we heard about. The- what was it, darling, a moose inside a goose?”  
  
“Something like that, yeah,” Aurelius says grudgingly. “I’ll have Chef make you something up.”  
  
“And is this your new boyfriend?”  
  
Marcus takes back the thing about her being sweet as several sets of eyes all swivel towards him. The woman’s eyes are tearing up a little, and Marcus spies her clutching Aurelius’s hand a little too tightly. She’s smiling between them both like someone’s just told her she’s won the lottery.  
  
“Er, well, mummy, the thing is-“  
  
“Yes,” Marcus grits out, extending a handshake. “I’m Marcus. Aurelius’s boyfriend.”  
  
“Lovely to finally meet you, Marcus. We’ve heard so much about you, isn’t that right?” She beams between her son and her husband, who flexes his arms to make the veins bulge. Marcus cringes.  
  
“Yes, Aurelius is always talking about you!” she continues. “Even when you were both working at the granary - it was always Marcus this and Marcus that! Marcus’s hair looked nice today, and Marcus had a new tunic on. We should’ve known, really.”  
  
“Er, right,” Marcus himself says, floundering. “Lovely. I’ll, er, just see where your food’s up to, yeah?”  
  
Grumio’s a welcome relief from the rest of the insanity following Marcus around today, so he happily lets him stuff away to his heart’s content while he sits quietly in a corner, trying not to have a panic attack. If Stylax were here, he’d make a joke and Marcus would laugh, and that’d be it. Maybe if Stylax was here, Marcus could convince him to stand in as Aurelius’s boyfriend, since he’d had enough practice with his sponsor. God, he misses Stylax.  
  
It rushes over him sometimes, the grief, knocks the wind out of him. Usually Marcus hides it well under layers of sarcasm and self-deprecation and worry about the business and the rent, but Stylax being dead is like having a cavern in his chest, a gaping hole ripped right out of his body that no-one but him can see. Except Aurelius, maybe, who pats him on the shoulder to cheer him up when Marcus goes quiet, or makes him food that isn’t cheese rolled by Grumio’s dirty hands. Credit where credit’s due, Aurelius isn’t so bad at picking up human signals _all_ the time. The other day Marcus had been reading one of Stylax’s old charioteering scrolls and he’d just been close to tearing up when Aurelius had come in and distracted him quietly with hot tea and the offer of a board game. Maybe-  
  
“Sorry about them,” Aurelius says now, bustling into the kitchen. “I told them not to come! I did! And- thanks for playing along, buddy. You’re a real pal.”  
  
“A pal. Yeah,” Marcus echoes. “No problem, mate.”  
  
“And all that stuff, about me talking about you, that’s just hyperbole. Stories from work, you know how parents get, wanting to know all the little details.”  
  
“Mmm-hmm, sure.”  
  
“It’s not- I don’t-“  
  
“Aurelius, it’s fine,” Marcus says eventually, and for the first time thinks it really might be. Aurelius’s mouth flutters into a weak smile, and there’s the beard again, right there, close enough that Marcus could reach out an index finger and touch it if he wanted.  
  
“Mummy loves you, for what it’s worth. She’s already envisioning the centrepieces,” Aurelius huffs.  
  
“Oh, fantastic.”

* * *

 

Back at the flat, Grumio’s enjoying the last bit of sun in the courtyard and Jason has a date which will hopefully end in raucous sex at someone else's house tonight, so Marcus is alone with Aurelius.  
  
“I’ll fix us some dinner,” the man announces, making to get up from the sofa. Marcus halts him with a hand on his arm, clears his throat like he knows what he wants to say. Which he doesn’t. At all.  
  
“Not hungry, Marcus?” Aurelius asks after a moment, when Marcus has neither relinquished his hold or spoken. There’s a curious gaze settled upon him, and Marcus can feel the silence stretching out awkwardly, but still doesn’t quite know how to fill it.  
  
“Just- sit down for a minute, yeah? There’s, er, there’s something I need to say.”  
  
“Look, if it’s about what happened before, can’t we just forget about it? My parents have promised not to drop in unannounced in future, and I’ve warned them that you’re afraid of commitment. They’re not expecting a white wedding just yet.”  
  
“I’m afraid of commitment?!” Marcus splutters. “I’m not afraid of commitment! I love commitment, actually!” Which is true. What Marcus wouldn’t give for a long-lasting relationship, one that’s actually headed somewhere and doesn’t end up with him being humiliated in front of a crowd of hungry punters.  
  
“I didn’t say it was true!”  
  
“Anyway - not the point. That’s not what I was gonna say.”  
  
“Do you want me to leave?” Aurelius asks in a small voice.  
  
“No.” It’s the truth, no matter how weird it sounds. “I don’t want you to go. But, look, if I don’t say it I’ll go mad. I think I already have gone a bit mad, to be honest.”  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“It’s- it’s your bloody beard, all right?”  
  
“My… my beard?” Aurelius lets out a sharp laugh, as if that was the last thing on earth he was expecting. “What about it?”  
  
“I can’t stop bloody looking at it!”  
  
“Wha- why? What’s wrong with it? Is there something stuck in it?”  
  
“No! There’s nothing _wrong_ with it, per se, it’s just… distracting.” Marcus realises how insane this whole thing sounds, and backtracking sounds like a brilliant idea right about now. “Er, I mean-“  
  
“Do you want me to shave it off?” Aurelius asks. There it is again, that quiet voice, like he’s afraid to disrupt the silence. “It’s no big deal, I can get rid of it.”  
  
“No!” Marcus yells, and suddenly that’s true as well. “I just…”  
  
“Well, I really don’t know what you want me to do about it, then. If it’s so distracting, why don’t-“  
  
“I do something about it? Alright then.” And Marcus yanks him in by the collar, has just enough time to see Aurelius’s startled expression before he crushes their lips together, knows his eyes are still open on instinct. Aurelius is a surprisingly good kisser, and Marcus can feel the coarse strands of his beard tickling his own chin, and this is the first man he’s ever snogged and by Jove it’s better than he imagined. Tons better.  
  
Marcus winds an arm around Aurelius’s neck to pull him closer, feels a whuff of air against his neck while they pull apart for a breath, feels the astonishment still radiating off him. But he’s kissing back, and he’s definitely not pulling away, and he smells like fruit and ovens and goose meat and it’s _good_.  
  
When they finally separate to breathe, Aurelius is staring at Marcus like he’s grown a second head. It’s a bit awkward, really, and Marcus has no idea where they both stand now, but then Aurelius smiles and it’s worth it, somehow, to see him genuinely cheered up.  
  
“Was that- was that the something?” he asks, shakily. Marcus can’t help but laugh, stopping abruptly when Aurelius’s face starts to crumple, and slides his right hand into Aurelius’s left.  
  
“Yeah. Sorry.”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“If you weren’t, er, into it. I don’t know why you would be, really. I just…”  
  
“Couldn’t stop thinking about it?” Aurelius guesses. “Me neither.”  
  
“So you…?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Neither of them knows what to say now, so Marcus coughs and finally asks, “So, about that dinner?”

* * *

 

Later, when they’re both full and Grumio’s asleep and the flat feels safe and warm even without Stylax sprawled over the furniture, Marcus finds himself on the uncomfortable sofa with Aurelius, both of them rigid, with eyes straight ahead, pretending to watch the last bit of sunset fade out of the window. He tips his head slightly to rest on the jut of other man’s bony collarbone, looks up at him.  
  
“Fancy moving in properly, then? Let your poor parents have a happy retirement?"  
  
“What? But that pompous arsehole’s taking up the spare room.”  
  
“Yeah. Didn’t mean in the spare room.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yeah. So…?”  
  
“Yeah. Yes. I’d like that.”  
  
“Me too.”


End file.
